Survival Paradox (eBook)

Introduction

We live in a time when groundbreaking medical advancements are radically improving health and longevity. Yet, despite these astounding achievements, more of us are affected by chronic diseases than ever before. Statistics paint a dire picture: we may be living longer than generations past, but our collective health continues to decline under the weight of complex, degenerative conditions. Even in the absence of diagnosed illness, many of us wake in the morning to chronic pain, anxiety, or depression.

We tend to accept this decline in health as part of the normal aging process—but it doesn’t have to be.

When we take a step back and consider why these conditions appear and where they come from, we see that they are a result of our bodies’ physical responses and emotional reactions to the world around us. In turn, those responses and reactions are all driven by a singular, fundamental need: survival. Humans are designed to survive. Our bodies have literally been built for it.

As we evolved, we developed complex protective mechanisms as part of a natural response to the need for self-preservation—the need to survive. If we had evolved in a perpetually relaxed and safe environment, these survival mechanisms would not have developed! But of course, that was not the case. Instead, we have been shaped by external and internal stressors, whether physical, emotional, mental, or psychospiritual.

Although we can thank our survival response for making sure our species is still on the planet, such durability comes at a cost. For example, we are all aware of our most famous survival mechanism: the fight-or-flight response to danger. But many of us have not yet considered the cascading effects of such a response. How does our body get the energy to launch it? After the danger has passed, where do the chemicals and proteins we created go? All survival mechanisms take a toll.

Let’s think metaphorically for a moment. Imagine what happens in daily life when a crisis arises. Perhaps a client threatens to walk away from a deal, or your child breaks an arm, or the pipes burst in your bathroom. Suddenly, everything else in life is pushed to the side while you focus all time and energy on the crisis. You’re unable to pick up new clients while dedicating yourself to the unhappy one; or because you spend all evening in the emergency room with your child, you eat fast food and don’t sleep all night; or you spend twice as much money fixing the faulty pipes since you now need a rush job. The response to any crisis results in these kinds of casualties.

You already understand how the survival response works because you live it in your daily life! What you might not know is that similar crises and resulting casualties play out at the molecular level and have been since we were born and, indeed, since the origin of our species. Our bodies are not just trained to survive but to survive at any cost. Now imagine what happens when our environment and the pace of our lives create a situation in which our survival responses never turn off. Some of these inherent protective mechanisms are actually causing irreversible long-term damage to our health.

Further, when faced with a life-threatening illness, our innate survival response can even be fundamentally at odds with our ability to heal—it can literally create the kind of microenvironments where disease and cancer thrive. In an attempt to survive a stressor, our survival response may cause more damage than the stressor itself.

This is the survival paradox.

The question is, how do we determine which self-preservation responses are healthy and necessary for growth and development, and which ones are causing irreversible long-term damage? How can we transform our innate survival drive to work for us and promote healing, wholeness, and longevity rather than against us, causing suffering, isolation, disease, and premature death?

I have spent much of my life working to unravel this mystery, searching for the true source of our innate healing abilities.

My Life’s Work

For the last three decades, through my medical clinic, my two nonprofit organizations, and through collaboration with leading academic institutions across the globe, I’ve researched and treated cancer and complex diseases using integrative medicine—the synergistic combination of Western medical treatments and complementary therapies drawn from different systems. The fundamental intention of this holistic approach is to open more doors for recovery, transformation, and healing so that patients emerge with greater strength, vitality, and a more profound and satisfying experience of life itself. While considering the whole picture in both disease and healing, my research kept bringing me back to the survival paradox, what drives it, and how we do or don’t recover from it.

I’ve been trained in diverse systems including Western allopathic medicine, traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture, and others. I’ve extensively studied and practiced Buddhist meditation and mind-body healing methods, Western and Eastern herbal pharmacopeia, and served as the personal physician to renowned Buddhist masters all over the world. Collaborating with academic institutions and coauthoring peer-reviewed studies is as important in my training as the time I’ve spent with monks in remote mountains.

The integration of these studies and experiences has allowed me to develop a truly holistic, multidimensional perspective on health, disease, and healing. Above all, I have learned to let go of the expectations and dogmatic paradigms of our current medical systems, conventional and alternative. People often say I think “outside the box,” to which I respond that there was never a box to begin with. There was just the perception of one.

What You’ll Learn in This Book

Foundational to holistic mind-body healing is education. I am committed to empowering patients, practitioners, and anyone seeking guidance about lasting wellness. This book is the account of how we survive on a biochemical, physiological, and psychospiritual level—and what it means for health, disease, longevity, and quality of life. Through this lens, magnified with cutting-edge scientific data from the most exciting medical fields today, this book offers profound insights for overcoming illness and optimizing health.

• In Part 1 of our journey, you’ll receive an in-depth introduction to the survival paradox and, along with it, a paradigm shift in your understanding of the root causes of health and disease. We can master our biochemistry. And it may be simpler than we think! As you’ll learn, scientists have not only identified the one “master protein” responsible for most of the survival response’s damage, but have also discovered a way to stop it.
• In Part 2, you’ll come to understand the effects of the survival paradox in specific conditions, such as heart disease, lung disease, and cancer. Every organ responds differently to the survival paradox. You’ll also learn how to address these conditions based on insights from a variety of medical systems. (While you won’t need to fully grasp all of the biological concepts in order to start transforming your health, I have provided as much context as possible. Again, the more you understand, the better equipped you will be for healing.) Think of Part 2 as your micro roadmap.
• In Part 3 you’ll develop your macro roadmap. Here, you’ll learn holistic methods for transforming the survival response, releasing unhealthy fixation, and shifting from struggle to harmony.
• Woven between the science and advice are a collection of anecdotes, real-life patient stories from my thirty-plus years as a physician in the field of integrative medicine. They are stories of healing, radical recovery, and loss, and of community and courage. It’s my hope that these stories give you inspiration, insight, and a new perspective for overcoming challenges, no matter how great or small.
• Throughout it all, I will return to the overarching concept and argument that what happens at the cellular level also happens at the individual, community, global, and even universal levels. Buddhism teaches that everything in the universe is connected. We see that this is true when we map cellular behavior beside community behavior and find the same mechanisms at work. When we learn to heal our bodies, our relationships with each other, or our connection to the earth, we simultaneously learn to heal at all other levels.

I would like to clarify that this is not a how-to book. I won’t tell you, “How to Reverse Aging and Disease in Ten Easy Steps.” Such lists can be a helpful way to start, but they are rarely transformative because they are antithetical to true, holistic mind-body healing. Rather, within these pages, you will explore a much deeper cause of illness and aging and what to do about it on all levels. You will be able to answer the key question of what it means to truly heal, and how we may cultivate this innate capacity to the fullest.

Altogether, the book comprises an even bigger story, a narrative of the primordial root of our existence. We are built to survive. But how you survive—whether at all costs or minimal costs—is up to you. Once you know the narrative, you can become the author of your own story.

That’s what I did.

The insights in this book are the result of my personal exploration. Through­out my life, while I have rejoiced in my successes, I have also learned much from my failures. Specific...